The Earth’s Magnetic Field Remains a Charged Mystery
Professor Gregory Ryskin from the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University in Illinois.
400 years of discussion and we’re still not sure what creates the Earth’s magnetic field, and thus the magnetosphere, despite the importance of the latter as the only buffer between us and deadly solar wind of charged particles (made up of electrons and protons). New research raises question marks about the forces behind the magnetic field and the structure of Earth itself.
The controversial new paper published in New Journal of Physics (co-owned by the Institute of Physics and the German Physical Society), ‘Secular variation of the Earth’s magnetic field: induced by the ocean flow?’, will deflect geophysicists’ attention from postulated motion of conducting fluids in the Earth’s core, the twentieth century’s answer to the mysteries of geomagnetism and magnetosphere. (more…)
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Magnetic Tremors Pinpoint the Impact Epicenter of Earthbound Space Storms
Artist's concept of a solar storm breaking through the earth's magnetic field. Credit: NASA
Using data from NASA’s THEMIS mission, a team of University of Alberta researchers has pinpointed the impact epicenter of an earthbound space storm as it crashes into the atmosphere, and given an advance warning of its arrival.
The team’s study reveals that magnetic blast waves can be used to pinpoint and predict the location where space storms dissipate their massive amounts of energy. These storms can dump the equivalent of 50 gigawatts of power, or the output of 10 of the world’s largest power stations, into Earth’s atmosphere.
The energy that drives space storms originates on the sun. The stream of electrically charged particles in the solar wind carries this energy toward Earth. The solar wind interacts with Earth’s magnetic field. Scientists call the process that begins with Earth’s magnetic field capturing energy and ends with its release into the atmosphere a geomagnetic substorm. (more…)
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Exotic Quantum Phenomena Paves Way for New Type of Computing
In planar materials like graphene, light-like electrons must always come in pairs (even number of cones). By directly imaging the spinning of electrons confined to the surfaces of special materials, an international team of scientists led by Princeton University have now shown the existence of a new type of strange quantum matter in nature called 'topological insulators', which contain only half an electron pair or just one cone. This highly unusual observation shows that if an electron is tagged 'red' and then undergoes a full 360 degree revolution about the ring, it does not recover its initial face as an ordinary everyday object would do, but instead acquires a different color 'blue'. The researchers have shown that this new quantum effect can be the basis for the realization of a rare quantum phase or the 'color' of the electron, which had been a long-sought key ingredient for developing quantum computers that can correct themselves. (Credit: Zahid Hasan)
Researchers report seeing electrons mimic the presence of a magnetic field where none is present. The discovery paves way for a new type of quantum computing.
An international team of scientists led by a Princeton University group recently discovered that on the surface of certain materials collective arrangements of electrons move in ways that mimic the presence of a magnetic field where none is present. The finding represents one of the most exotic macroscopic quantum phenomena in condensed-matter physics: a topological Quantum Spin Hall effect.
The research could lead to advances in building a new type of quantum computer that has the flexibility to operate at moderate temperatures as opposed to the low temperatures that are a standard requirement for today’s powerful computing devices. The work at Princeton was funded by the National Science Foundation’s Division of Materials Research and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Sciences.
Previously researchers could only observe similar motion of electrons under strong magnetic fields and low temperatures known as the quantum Hall effect, which became the foundation of two Nobel Prizes in Physics in 1985 and 1998.
But, theorists at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California at Berkeley proposed that on the boundaries of certain three-dimensional materials, the spin of individual electrons and the direction in which they move were directly aligned with corresponding electrons without needing high magnetic fields or very low temperatures. In order for this to happen, researchers also theorized that electrons need to move at extremely high speeds. (more…)
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